It was time to be gone, but instead, she strode along the shoreline, her skirt damp to the waist with spray and wave, her eyes flickering between the treacherous waves and the rocky shore. If the selkies found shipwreck and human debris along the shore, they would take it below the waves when they left. They couldn’t create trouble with it like they could with the magic-threaded seaweed, but if Eurion had come from a particular shipwreck, Carys would like to know which one. Memory was a strange thing, and a few mementos from a lost ship could be all it took for Eurion’s memory to return. Eurion would know who he was, and Carys—well, Carys would know from where exactly he had obtained that ring. Good news or bad, it would at least mean that Eurion would go. The sooner he was gone from Carys’ cottage, the sooner her life could return to something of its usual pattern.

  As she passed swiftly along the shoreline, she saw a lump of brown and green where the grey sea foamed against the darkness of the rocks; something she was fairly certain hadn’t been there when she passed this section earlier. She would have seen something that big; it was likely that the selkies had put it there for her to find when they arrived. She looked around with quick, cautious eyes at the tearing of the waves and at the pools that were close and bottomless. Nothing was obviously in sight. Still, she stole forward lightly, ready to spring back if necessary, and nudged the pile with her seaweed hook. The sea shifted back and forth; nothing sprang from the white peaks there, and there was no movement from behind, either. The pile moved a little, stiffly, at the prodding of her hook, and it seemed to Carys that it was leather. Leather, and something that scraped a little as she disturbed it with her hook. A sword-belt?

  Carys reversed her hook and dug it beneath the stiff, braided leather, twisting sharply. She pulled back swiftly, but not swiftly enough; her hook wrenched in her hand and slipped back toward the sea by a few inches before she grasped it with her other hand. At the end of her hook was a selkie, half in and half out of the water, still all seal, but with a fierce set of teeth and a good amount of muscle that was determined to drag her into the sea with it. Carys pulled back, her toes gripping the rocks, and gained back a little ground; but she had already seen a flash of white above her shoulder on the higher rocks that wasn’t a seagull flying. She lunged forward, giving too much ground in her haste, and jerked the seaweed hook in a quarter turn. The selkie fell back into the sea with a surprised flap, tipping the sword-belt after it, but Carys caught the belt with her free hand as it slithered away. It slipped over her arm and she ducked her head to take it cross-ways around her chest as the slap of feet and the mischievous laugh of selkies sounded behind her.

  Carys threw a look up at the rocks behind her just in time to see a white, toothy, bright-eyed selkie as it leapt at her. She ducked low and sharp to avoid the leap, black rocks biting into her left knee and palm, and something closed around her right wrist with teeth as sharp as the rocks, jerking her toward the sea. She dropped the haft of her hook and rolled toward the tug, punching down with her left hand at the bulbous eyes and long whiskers that snarled above her right wrist. Cold fingers snatched at her arm as she raised it to strike again, and Carys rolled forward one more time, rock tearing at her clothes and the sword-belt tilting her dangerously close to the sea. The teeth around her wrist moved with a jagged kind of pain that made her gasp, and lost grip. Carys darted up and between the pale, naked limbs of two selkies, startling them toward the hungry sea, and snatched up her hook again. She leaped desperately for the higher rocks again, ignoring the shrieks of the selkie who had almost tumbled into the sea in its human form, and felt fingers close around her ankle.

  She fell, twisting as she did, her hands catching vainly at the rocks, and felt the slice of shells tear her trews just before something bright and painful exploded in her forehead. There was a dark, cold moment where Carys thought that she might faint or be sick, then she was up and off across the rocks again, a lethargy pulling her down with the weight of the sword-belt toward the rocks, and a confusing dizziness pulling her sideways toward the safety of sand. She let the pull of dizziness take her toward the sand, avoiding as many of the pools as she could see in the confusing haze of up and down, rock and sky, and at last fell again, unable to stop herself.

  This time, soft sand met her instead of sharp rock, and Carys subsided into it, shivering, her eyes shut. She could still feel her seaweed hook, and the weight at the end of it that had nearly seen her lost at sea like so many of the guardians that had lived in the cottage before her. So instead of trying to rise and deal with her seaweed, Carys let herself stay there, cold and dizzy and sick, and hugged her seaweed hook to herself, unwilling to move until she could do it without falling over again.

  She was a fool. She knew that, clinging to her seaweed hook with the cold grit of sand on her cheek and the afternoon growing warm around her. She had known it at the time, too: she had known it was probably a trap, and she hadn’t been able to resist, despite that. She had never been able to resist the challenge of the sea—the selkies knew it, the sea knew it, and everything that came from the sea knew it.

  Carys rolled over and asked of the sky, her voice raspy and tired, “Who else gets called to serve on the shores but the mad?”

  She stared up at the sky for a little longer—or perhaps it was some time longer. Her head felt cold and light where she had hit it on the rocks, and by the time she managed to sit up without falling over again, there was a suspicious early-evening feel to the air around her. She climbed to her feet carefully, leaning heavily on her hook, and found herself grateful for its support. The support of the twin shafts of her handcart were even more welcome when she finished loading the seaweed, with the bric-a-brac and sword-belt rather clumsily on top of it. It was significantly easier to walk as she pulled the cart than it had been loading the seaweed. Her body might still have the tendency to list to the left, but so long as she was between the shafts of the cart it was easy to remain on her feet.

  By the time she was nearly home, Carys felt as though she was beginning to walk properly again, though the weariness she had felt earlier was still weighing on her. The cart was a distinct burden now, and she stared only at the sandy path before her as she toiled onward. She didn’t realise how far she had come until there was a shout from the direction of the cottage.

  Carys looked up wearily to see Eurion dashing down the sandy path toward her. She dropped the handles of her cart to fend him off, and felt the world move around her again in an uneasy way. She pushed the calf of her left leg against the cart to steady herself and caught Eurion before he could throw his arms around her.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped. “Get back in the cottage! You’ll make yourself sick again!”

  Eurion didn’t seem to hear her. He said, breathlessly, “Lady! You were so late today! Why are you wet and sandy? You’re bleeding!”

  Carys pushed away the hands that were exploring the area around her cut forehead. “I was late because there was work to do,” she said. “The waves were boisterous today.”

  “But Lady! It’s bleeding!”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I was careless.”

  Eurion closed his mouth on what she was quite sure were more protestations, but Carys was uneasily aware that he had seen her stagger. He said, “I’ll bring in the cart.”

  “There’s no need,” Carys told him, as she had always told Aled.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that Eurion and Aled were very different creatures: that Eurion didn’t know the rules. He made a soft psh sort of noise and wriggled in behind Carys, between her and the front-board of the cart.

  “Out of my way, Lady,” he said cheerfully, and started forward without giving the startled Carys more than a moment to get out of the way.

  She escaped the shafts of the cart without injury, used to moving quickly when there was need, but she said, “What? Will you run me down if I’m not quick enough?”

  “Sorry,” Eurion said, but he didn’t sound very sorry. He still had a cheerful tone to his voice and despite the fact that he panted a little as he pulled the cart the rest of the way toward the cottage, he didn’t seem to regret his action, or even to slow down.

  Carys walked beside the cart just behind Eurion, two fingers resting lightly on the wooden side to keep her balance. It was a relief to be free from the cart; she could see the cottage not far away, perhaps only another ten minutes of walking, but already the uneasy buzz to her ears had gone away. She had had an accident a time or two on the shore before—some of them worse than this one, and some of them barely significant—and she knew she would be competent to wake and work tomorrow as usual. Once, she had been so badly injured that she had woken with the dawn, just on the safe, sandy side of the beach with—but that, thought Carys, didn’t bear thinking about. She had had help that day, too; unexpected help that was just as startling as Eurion’s help.

  For that reason, Carys didn’t speak as harshly as she would have liked to. Instead, she followed along just behind and beside the boy, her eyes fixed on the cottage above that golden head of hair with its dark roots.

  When they arrived, she merely said, “Put the cart beside the wall,” and went on into the house. It was early evening already; Eurion hadn’t eaten or had the last of his medicinal tea yet.

  She heard the hasty thump of the handcart’s supports hitting the ground as she passed through the door, and Eurion came through the door after her, dancing around her until he could peer at her face with concerned eyes.

  “Don’t do that,” Carys said. It would be a lie to say that she had an uneasy alliance with the sea because it never stared back—the sea looked back in a variety of ways—but certainly the sea never stared at her with such concern. That sort of concern was something Carys had only ever seen once or twice before in her life. “Get out of the kitchen and stop bothering me!” she said. “How can I prepare a meal with you underfoot?”

  “You should lie down, Lady,” Eurion said. He still hovered in front of her as though he thought she would collapse, and Carys wished wearily that he would move so that she could prop herself against the kitchen table to prepare their meal.

  “There’s no need,” she said, putting him out of the way, physically this time. Eurion moved, though she had the impression that it was because he had done so voluntarily rather than because her push had been particularly powerful. “If you’re feeling well enough—”

  “I’ll stack the seaweed, shall I?”

  “No. It needs to be stacked properly.” The seaweed was also still very damp, and Carys didn’t trust to Eurion’s continued recovery if he got wet again. She shouldn’t have let him pull the cart as it was. She added, “In the cart, there are a few things I found on the shore this morning. Bring them in and look at them. See if they’re familiar.”

  Eurion’s golden brown eyes focused on her again. “Did they come from a shipwreck? Like me?”

  “We’re not sure you did come from a shipwreck,” Carys said; though where else could he have come from, for the sea to spit him out on her shore? “Don’t assume things. Or do you remember something?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Are you going to fall over, Lady?”

  “Of course not. Go and get the things from my handcart.”

  He went slowly, reluctantly, with one eye on her, and Carys breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him. What an annoyingly perceptive child! It was difficult to lean against the table to ease her dizziness while he was watching—it seemed as though he could see it. Well, if he were preoccupied with studying the few knick-knacks she had picked up, or the sword-belt she had rescued with such danger from the selkies, she would be freed from his attention for a little while.

  She hung the kettle and stood for a few moments near the brightness of that warmth, feeling with relief her clothes beginning to separate from her damp skin as they dried. She should really change, but she felt that she didn’t have the energy to do so; instead, Carys sloughed her trews beneath her skirts and hung them by the fire to dry properly, warming her bare legs until she heard Eurion’s hand on the doorknob outside. Her stride was more sure when she went back to the kitchen table, and she needed to do little more than lean one hip slightly against the tabletop as she poured oats into the small cauldron she used for porridge. She still felt chilled to the bone despite the warmer evening; it would be nice to have something warm and salty and heavy in her stomach.

  The door swung open; Eurion’s quick step on the threshold, and a glance over at him was enough to make Carys smile faintly in satisfaction. His eyes were frowningly fixed on that sword-belt, the small Contraption pouch hanging disregarded from his wrist; and he turned the scabbard this way and that in the flickering firelight of the room.

  “There’s no craftsman mark on the scabbard,” he said.

  Carys, pouring water into the porridge cauldron, heard the unfamiliar rasp and rattle of a sword clearing its scabbard, and looked up again, involuntarily. Eurion turned the blade over much as he had turned the scabbard, the blade light and comfortable in his hand and his face reflecting in the metal.

  “There’s a mark on the blade, though,” he said. Carys wasn’t sure whether he was talking to her or himself. “I think—I’m not sure—but I think it’s a military issue blade. Pretty standard, nothing beautiful. Just…plain and useful.”

  She left the porridge briefly to attend to the boiling kettle at the fire, and brought it back to the table. “What military?”

  Eurion frowned. “Perhaps I’ll remember later. It can’t be my sword, at any rate.”

  That made sense, thought Carys, setting down the kettle on its trivet with her mind far away. If a ship carrying Eppan nobles had been lost at sea, it was likely there had been military aboard her—whether private or country.

  “I don’t know, though,” said Eurion thoughtfully. Carys wondered if he knew that those brown eyes of his were glowing with a soft, golden look that suggested content; or if he knew how comfortably the hilt of that blade rested within his long fingers. “I think I know how to use this.”

  “Take it outside, then,” she said. It would be pleasant to get him out of the cottage again so that she could bathe her forehead and change in peace.

  Eurion, annoyingly, said, “I’ll play with it tomorrow,” and propped the sword, belt and all, by the fireplace. The Contraption pouch, he dropped beside it. “I think you should go to bed, Lady. I can sleep by the fire now.”

  “I’ll go when we’ve eaten and the things are washed.”

  “I’ll wash the dishes,” Eurion said obligingly. He propped himself up on the other end of the table, his long, lean figure bent over to rest his crossed arms on the tabletop and his chin on his arms.

  Irritated at that unbroken gaze, Carys said shortly, “No.”

  “I won’t break them.”

  “No.”

  “Shall I set the table?”

  “No.”

  Eurion’s eyes lit suddenly with laughter. “Lady, you should say yes every now and then. Just by way of a change.”

  Carys threw him a brief look across the tabletop as she poured his tea. “Don’t jostle the table. You’ll spill the tea.”

  “Then I’ll lick it up,” said Eurion, without removing his folded arms from the table, or his chin from those folded arms.

  “Breathe your steam instead,” she told him, and threw a teacloth at him.

  He grinned and took it, ducking his head into the steamy aura of the tea. That left Carys free to hang the porridge over the fire and stir it slowly without interruption for a brief but delightfully chatter-free amount of time before Eurion withdrew his head from the steam and brought his tea with him to sit in front of the fire.

  Fortunately enough, the porridge was beginning to boil by then, and Carys only had to bear with his beaming face until it thickened properly and she took it away from the flames. She left him by the fire and brought back two bowls with her when she came. It was more convenient to sit beside him, where he couldn’t gaze up at her as easily, and she still felt as though she hadn’t quite got warm. She passed Eurion his bowl silently, and he ate the full bowl with enough speed and appreciation that Carys knew he must have been hungry for quite some time. Perhaps she would have to make sure there was always something cooked and ready about the house, for those few days when she didn’t come back as early as she would like. It had never been worth it before, but it wouldn’t do for Eurion to be without food.

  Considering that, Carys ate her own porridge at a decidedly slower pace, while Eurion set his bowl aside and wrapped his arms around his knees, laying his head sideways on those folded arms to sleepily watch her eat.

  She sighed faintly, but his eyes were only half open; perhaps he would fall asleep soon.

  Instead, he yawned and said, “Your sleeve is torn. Did you know?”

  Carys glanced down at it briefly. “I knew. The material is old, and it’s seen a little too much of the sun and sea. I’ll mend it tomorrow.”

  “It looks more like it’s been torn by teeth,” Eurion began. His eyes opened wide, entirely awake, and he snatched at Cary’s wrist, tugging her sideways. “There are teeth marks here!”

  Carys hit him with the bowl of her spoon and snatched her wrist away. There had been a nagging pain at her wrist, but in getting food for Eurion and trying to keep her weariness from him, she had forgotten those teeth marks. If she had remembered, she would have changed her dress at once.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “It happens sometimes along the shore.”